June 30

What a beautiful day! I love days when we can just leave the windows open and enjoy the breeze all day long.

Caleb and I celebrated the weather with some quality patio time.

(Please note all of the tomato carnage in the background. Caleb really likes to bite the cherry tomatoes, then throw them around so the guts splat out everywhere. Then he demands a new tomato. Our patio is like a cherry tomato graveyard.)

How sweet is he? (Please disregard the food/dirt on his face. Thank you.)

He drove the lawn tractor back and forth until it tipped over.

Then he was sad.

Then I laughed at his sad face.

Later, Jenny came over and got to experience what I do every day:

Caleb demanding to read eight million books, onerightaftertheotheragainagainagainmoreplease!

Luckily, it's an auntie's job to lovingly oblige all of her nephew's whims, and Jenny takes her role quite seriously.

(At least, until he starts talking and walking and voicing opinions. Then, I fear, she will do nothing but bicker with him and wrestle with him. I hope I'm wrong!)

Now I'm going to sleep.

June 29

I get the night off tonight - I'll be geeking it with some friends at a Twilight movie marathon until the wee hours of the morning - so I thought I'd do today's post a little bit early.

Caleb and I went to the library today. We try to go once a week, and each time he gets to pick five new books. We're getting to the point that he's already read all of the decent board books at the branch closest to us. Hopefully he'll be able to respectfully handle paper books soon, so Mommy doesn't get bored re-reading old books!

Caleb's favorite part of the library (aside from the beach balls hanging from the ceiling) is a miniature red leather armchair. He gets so excited when he sees it; he claps his hands until I put him in it.

Today I finally brought my camera into the library so you could see his pride and joy.

"See my cool chair?!?!"

He loves to flip through a good book in the chair. This one was a dinosaur book, but Caleb opened the book and immediately pointed out the "ball", which was really the sun.

June 28

Our front window saw a lot of action today. This morning, I opened all the windows to let a nice breeze in. Caleb couldn't resist the sheers dancing in the wind...

Then he saw my camera, and he couldn't resist that, either.

This evening, Chris was doing some yard work in the flower bed in front of the windows. Caleb couldn't handle the fact that Daddy was so close, but he couldn't see him.

So...

!

He pulled up!

Now, I realize that most babies hit this milestone when they're around 8 months old, and my baby is nearly a year old. In fact, I've been freaking out about the fact that my baby hasn't yet pulled up. Was he broken? I didn't know!

Now, my friends, I know that he is not broken.

Yay, Caleb!

But then....

Oh well. Baby steps.

June 27

It may be thunderstorming now, but we had some fun outside earlier!

That hose is just so much fun!

June 26

OK, I think we're all recovered from that nasty stomach bug.

But now my throat hurts....

We had fun today putting Caleb's handprints on a few things. Because paint was involved, I thought it prudent to do the handprinting outside, and with a naked baby.

It was definitely a good decision.

Cleanup was more fun than the handprinting!

He loved the hose!

(OK, I might not have taken these pictures. Chris took them. That may be kind of cheating, but they're so cute that I just don't care!)

June 25

Aaaannndddd.... the "fluke" vomiting takes down its third victim.

That's right. Chris woke up at 5 this morning, puking his guts out. Poor guy. I bet he wishes he had gone to work yesterday instead of staying home to take care of his family - maybe then he wouldn't be sick! Luckily, when Chris woke up vomiting, I woke up feeling cheerful, chipper, and back to my old self. Thank God the nasty virus staggered its attacks. I don't know how Caleb would have survived if both Chris and I were sick at the same time!

But Caleb and I had a good day, and I think Chris is finally close to feeling almost ok. If Caleb and I are any indication, he should wake up tomorrow feeling fine.

See how great Caleb feels?

This happens almost every morning. Usually it goes like this:

Caleb wakes up. Chris is already awake and getting ready for work, so he brings Caleb in to me.

I nurse Caleb in bed.

When Caleb's done, Chris takes him downstairs and they play so I can sleep a little bit longer.

Chris wakes me up when he's ready to leave for work.

I get dressed while Caleb plays, and then we go downstairs.

I drink coffee and check the blogs and Facebook while Caleb plays.

Caleb gets tired of playing, and I bust out the big guns:

"Do you want to go outside, Caleb?"

He immediately starts clapping (his version of the "more, please" sign) and kicking his feet.

We go outside and he scoots around, plays with the balls (tomatoes), digs in the dirt with his shovel, plays with the sprinkler tractor, swings with me on the glider...

It's a vital part of our morning. We love it.

See?

June 24

Remember Caleb's "fluke" vomiting? It must have been a contagious fluke, because at 3am it hit me with a vengeance.

Thankfully, I married the best man ever. Chris stayed home from work today to take care of our little bug while I slept. All. Day.

I thought I was feeling better. Now I'm not so sure.

But my boys had a great day, and Mr. Wonderful even took some photos for me. Love him.

This teddy bear was Chris' when he was little. We call it, and Caleb, "Brownbear".

(Can you see Caleb's goofy top two teeth?)

I'm sad I missed all of the brownbear loving!

June 23

Seriously? Is it June 23? Where did June go? I have a birthday party to plan!

Can you believe that in just over two weeks, Caleb will be one?

ONE!!!

Holy Cow.

We had a great day today with the library and the pool and playing catch and listening to music.

Caleb's only nod to the fact that he woke up at midnight covered in vomit?

A 2 hour, 40 minute nap this afternoon.

Can a baby have a fluke-vomiting session? Because I think mine did.

See how happy he is? It must have been a fluke.

And see how cute he is?

This is why I get nothing done.

June 22

It was so hot today.

We love the pool!

June 21

I might have just been tempted to cheat.

Somehow, I only managed to take 8 photos today, and they were all various incarnations of the same bad picture. What I really wanted to do today was pull up some other picture from my files and present it to you as today's photo.

But I didn't cheat. Everything about this is a mess, but it is what it is.

I may have cropped out the worst of this photo, which was books, toys, and debris scattered everywhere.

And yes, that's a Bible on the floor, under the coffee table. Is that sacreligious?

Right before I took this photo, I set Caleb down near his toys and went into the kitchen to grab some coffee. When I came back, he had scooted to the coffee table, grabbed a book, opened it, and was flipping the pages, babbling to himself.

It melted my heart to see him pretending to read - I love his current reading kick!

June 20

This, my friends, is all I need.

This is concrete proof that I have the world's best husband, and Caleb has the world's best Dad.

This was bedtime tonight.

Now, I realize this may just look like another "Caleb reading" photo, but it's not. It's so much more.

I was busy downstairs, cleaning up after dinner while Chris got Caleb ready for bed. It's our usual routine. But this time, Chris shouted down to me, "Carrie! I can't put Caleb in the bath. He won't stop reading!"

I ran up, camera in hand, and found it was true. Every time Chris put the books away, Caleb would sign "more" and pull another book off the bookshelf.

Be still my heart.

Why does this equal World's Best Dad?

Because as I scrolled through a year's worth of Caleb and Daddy photos this week, almost every other one was of Chris reading to Caleb.

I married him knowing he would be a good father, but I had no idea he'd be THIS good.

A proud new Daddy - July 2009

Caleb fit in the crook of his arm!

He always calls Caleb his little brownbear.

He's not ashamed to be a devoted Daddy.

Oh, how they laugh together!

He encourages Caleb's spirit of adventure.

What a great Daddy Chris is!

And a quick shout-out to the other Dads in our lives:

4 generations of first-born sons. What a powerful legacy! We love you, Grandad and Great-Grandad!

Grandpa, your playfulness means so much to us! Keep playing!

Great-Grandpa, thank you for being a man of character.

We love you, Dads!

June 19

I just want to preface this photo with a warning:

THIS IS NOT BLOOD.

REPEAT: THIS IS NOT BLOOD

All warnings aside, doesn't my kiddo look like a vampire or zombie that just finished a meal?

He was actually enjoying the first edible strawberry from our garden. Obviously, it was much jucier than I anticipated. What fun!

Then, we celebrated Father's Day early with a yummy steak dinner.

Even Caleb ate steak!

This was his reaction:

curiosity,

enjoyment,

and finally, passion!

"Give me more steak, Ma!

MA! THE STEAK!"

June 18

I'm sick.

I sound like a man-frog in a library, and I have medicine head out the wazoo.

When Chris came home from work, I may or may not have handed the baby off to him and headed right up to bed, blatantly disregarding dinner or bedtime activites, only to wake just in time to kiss Caleb good night.

But this morning?

I felt nothing but sheer delight as Caleb ate his first tomato.

This was not just any tomato, though.

I grew it myself.

He definitely appreciated the fruits of my labors.

I love the tomato seed dripping down his chin!

After he ate half of the tomato, he remembered that the whole reason he wanted it in the first place was because it was a ball.

And then we played catch with a half-eaten tomato.

What a glorious morning.

June 17

This is what bedtime looks like at our house.

Although usually it's in color, not black and white.

On a completely unrelated note, I was really excited to find snails in our yard today!

Unless snails are a bad thing.

Are snails a bad thing?

I really wanted to show Caleb the snails, but it was during his morning nap and there's no way this momma is going to wake her child during a nap.

Maybe tomorrow.

June 16

Whoa, Nelly.

Somehow I ended up with quite a few adorable photos today. But I won't bore you with all of them; after all, this is ONE Caleb a Day, and you've been so gracious about allowing me to post 3 or 4 on a regular basis. I don't want to push it. So instead, just 3 today. If you're curious, you can check the Picasa site for others. If you don't know the Picasa site, then you don't need to see them. :)

So, Caleb still isn't crawling.

STILL.

Not only is he not crawling, he's not pulling up, or cruising, or getting to sitting from his stomach, or any of the other things babies much younger than him should be able to do.

I'm starting to feel like a bad mom.

I've noticed, though, that he has started getting up on all fours (you know, the precursor to crawling that most babies do at 5 months? The thing that my 11-month-old still doesn't do?) when he's in bed with me in the morning.

So I've started giving him more mattress time to practice. Any old mattress will do, so now we have playtime in the crib when he wakes up from his nap.

This is what a freshly woken Caleb looks like through the bars of his crib:

This is what he looks like inside the crib:

This is what he looks like when he realizes I've placed my camera inside the crib and he thinks he's going to (finally!) be able to grab it and chew on it to his heart's content:

What a little stinker.

June 15

Things Caleb likes to do:

bang blocks together

(Apparently they make a really fun noise.)

eat real food

(This was cheese. Or broccoli. Or ground beef. Something we had for dinner.)

ask for more food

(This is his version of the sign for "more". To the untrained eye, it just looks like he's clapping. But he's not. He's signing. Because he's brilliant.)

share food

(He only shares with people he really likes: Daddy, Mommy, and Sara's sister Mary. He has a thing for blondes.)